the record of “how Alphonso, a Portuguese, being wrecked on the coast of Guinney, and being presented by the king thereof with his weight in gold for a cat to kill their mice; and an oyntment to kill their flies, which he improved within five years to 6000l. in the place, and, returning to Portugal after fifteen years traffick, became the third man in the kingdom."[1] Keightley also quotes two similar stories from Thiele’s Danish Popular Traditions and another from the letters of Count Magalotti, a Florentine of the latter half of the seventeenth century.

Mr. Lysons gives much information as to the great value of cats in the Middle Ages, but the writer of the History of Whittington does not lead us to believe that they were dear in England, for he makes the boy buy his cat for one penny.  The two following titles are from the Stationers’ Registers.  The ballad is probably the one subsequently referred to as by Richard Johnson:—­

“The History of Richard Whittington, of his lowe birthe, his great fortune, as yt was plaied by the Prynces Servants.  Licensed to Thomas Pavyer, Feb. 8, 1604-5.”

“A Ballad, called The vertuous lyfe and memorable death of Sir Richard Whittington, mercer, sometymes Lord Maiour of the honorable Citie of London.  Licensed to John Wright, 16 July, 1605.”

The first reference that we find to the cat incident is in the play Eastward Hoe by Chapman, Ben Jonson, and Marston; for, as the portrait which was said to have existed at Mercers’ Hall is not now known, it can scarcely be put in evidence.  This half-length portrait of a man of about sixty years of age, dressed in a livery gown and black cap of the time of Henry VIII. with a figure of a black and white cat on the left, is said to have had painted in the left-hand upper corner of the canvas the inscription, “R.  Whittington, 1536.”

In Eastward Hoe, 1605, Touchstone assures Goulding that he hopes to see him reckoned one of the worthies of the city of London “When the famous fable of Whittington and his puss shall be forgotten.”

The next allusion is in Thomas Heywood’s If you know not me, you know nobody, 2nd part, 1606.

Dean Nowell. “This Sir Richard Whittington, three times Mayor, Sonne to a knight and prentice to a mercer, Began the Library of Grey-Friars in London, And his executors after him did build Whittington Colledge, thirteene Alms-houses for poore men, Repair’d S. Bartholomewes, in Smithfield, Glased the Guildhall, and built Newgate.

  Hobson. Bones of men, then I have heard lies;
  For I have heard he was a scullion,
  And rais’d himself by venture of a cat.

  Nowell. They did the more wrong to the gentleman.”

Here it will be seen that, although the popular tale is mentioned, it is treated as a mere invention unworthy of credence.

The next in point of time is the ballad by Richard Johnson, published in the Crowne Garland of Goulden Roses (1612), which probably had a much earlier existence in a separate form.  It is the earliest form of the story of Whittington now in existence.